"There are some stories that can be read and will leave a taste in your mouth so rotten that you'll wish you could spit it out - but you won't. You'll swallow these words in resistant eager mouthfuls piece by piece until the impression it leaves you with is everlasting. Even with a generous warning, the overt label plastered on its contents that promises heartache and periods of unease you will continue to ingest what you have been given. Because here you are - and here you'll stay. We all do in some way. Impossibly human - a promised forbidden fruit left in your hungry maw just waiting for you to chew"
"The thing about poison? It can sometimes be hidden under a sweet promise. At least here no such honey lies are present. Not for us at least"
Hunched over in her rocking chair, the old woman stopped her tale of warning when the kitten she'd been preaching to, staring back at the beady eyes of her owner, reached a paw and placed it on her crooked nose. It ended the staring contest, the older groaning and with a bony hand dropped the kitten to the floor. It meowed in protest, its ginger paws padding on a creaky wooden floor, circling beneath the table by the woman's side.
"You never appreciate me talking, I'd be rid of you if you didn't put the children at ease"
A single bowl of sweets - candy - treats - lay in the woman's lap, and a goblet of something sticky would rest upon the table. Home-baked cakes she would give to the ones who would come to her porch light, shining so brightly like a lighthouse in a calming storm above her head. One by one by one they would be taken in eager hands, scoffed down when no wrappers were provided for the cakes in the gauntlet. She'd smile and point them down the road, telling them to head into the fog and the mist, to ignore the screams of enthusiastic neighbors.
Some more observant children would be horrified by the skeleton face that met them, some would sit and cry, telling the old woman stories of how they got to her house on the verge of nothingness, most didn't remember at all, and some were so young that they would be carried by prams made of smoke and tears. Some would buy her bid for normalcy and shout a merry trick or treat. But no matter what they said or did, one by one they would leave as they must, guided mostly up a seemingly steep hill where the heavens opened or taken down the lane into a swallowing darkness. Some would take the sweet lies of candy with them on their journey up or down, and some would accept the truth.
"The thing about poison? It can sometimes be hidden under a sweet promise. At least here no such honey lies are present. Not for us at least"
Hunched over in her rocking chair, the old woman stopped her tale of warning when the kitten she'd been preaching to, staring back at the beady eyes of her owner, reached a paw and placed it on her crooked nose. It ended the staring contest, the older groaning and with a bony hand dropped the kitten to the floor. It meowed in protest, its ginger paws padding on a creaky wooden floor, circling beneath the table by the woman's side.
"You never appreciate me talking, I'd be rid of you if you didn't put the children at ease"
A single bowl of sweets - candy - treats - lay in the woman's lap, and a goblet of something sticky would rest upon the table. Home-baked cakes she would give to the ones who would come to her porch light, shining so brightly like a lighthouse in a calming storm above her head. One by one by one they would be taken in eager hands, scoffed down when no wrappers were provided for the cakes in the gauntlet. She'd smile and point them down the road, telling them to head into the fog and the mist, to ignore the screams of enthusiastic neighbors.
Some more observant children would be horrified by the skeleton face that met them, some would sit and cry, telling the old woman stories of how they got to her house on the verge of nothingness, most didn't remember at all, and some were so young that they would be carried by prams made of smoke and tears. Some would buy her bid for normalcy and shout a merry trick or treat. But no matter what they said or did, one by one they would leave as they must, guided mostly up a seemingly steep hill where the heavens opened or taken down the lane into a swallowing darkness. Some would take the sweet lies of candy with them on their journey up or down, and some would accept the truth.
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